BEYOND THE BREAKERS. To 9 June.
Tour
BEYOND THE BREAKERS
by Ivan Cutting
Eastern Angles Theatre Company Tour to 9 June 2005
Runs 2hr 25min One interval
TICKETS: www.easternangles.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 April at Polstead Village Hall
Documentary drama lives again, bringing home tales of the sea-coast.35 years ago every progressive actor's essential tool was a tape-recorder, used to collect verbatim accounts of local life. Libraries were raided for archive material. The voices of the people were the script of the show, theatre portraying a community back to itself. It didn't last long and never achieved widespread popularity. But it had its moments.
Ivan Cutting's new piece about Norfolk lifeboat crews in part looks back to that age. Several times a salty voiceover records experience, while there's dialogue that's unmistakeably been spoken down the microphone, livened by actors creating physical images of hauling and steering.
Action ranges widely within the oldest living memory and back to 1880. There are many tense moments and some comical ones, including a delightful sight of old lifeboatmen awkwardly adjusting to new rubber duck' boats where, for goodness' sake, you stand up to plough the waves. The RNLI comes in for criticism rationalising the Sheringham boat out of existence in smart London tones, while there are neatly cutting (as opposed to Cutting?) comments about science, enabling over-fishing and designing equipment that makes new lifeboats too expensive.
There's also an interpolated fictional story about a present-day family, setting rescue-work against modern realities in the region. It rounds out the experience, yet can seem mawkish or melodramatic alongside the documentary material's terse directness.
The men revel in the likes of legendary lifeboatman Henry Blogg and crewmen in extremis. David Redgrave's full-flavour old salt nicely contrasts Andy Wisher's contrastingly underplayed, cool-headed Jimbo. Angela Ward is largely confined to the family saga (where Sarah is herself sidelined into emotion-based responses), perhaps explaining why the technique shows in her efficient performance.
A strong score combines folk and hymn influences, including a fine anthem expressing the down-to-earth (so to speak) reality of emergency call-outs:
It's 4 in the morning, the choice has been made,
You're bleary and yawning and not even paid.
Add Rosie Alabaster's silver-grey set, its rubber duck' facing us like a benevolent porpoise, enhanced by Steve Cooney's atmospheric lighting (remarkable for a show that moves venue nightly) and there's a fine night out on terra firma at the likes of the village hall in Polstead, a remote, idyllic-looking community which offered its own contribution to theatre when William Corder killed Maria Marten in a red barn, and where the community-run shop opens specially at interval-time to dispense ice-cream.
Jimbo: Andy Wisher
Kevin: Peter Stickney
Sarah: Angela Ward
Hangdog: David Redgrave
Denny: Dean Lepley
Director: Ivan Cutting
Designer: Rosie Alabaster
Lighting: Steve Cooney
Sound: Bryan Hoyer
Music: Roger Eno, Pat Whymark
Assistant director: Dan Barnard
2005-04-06 14:41:17